Quality Assurance tools help lead to better quality of OSM data. Often, the tools achieve this by providing a list of bugs in the data, which mappers can then go and fix using editing tools. The bugs are either automatically detected based on rules and data analysis, or the tools provide a means of manually reporting them, or some combination of the two. There are many different ideas for how to do this, and what kind of bugs to focus on, hence many different tools.

OpenStreetMap is often more up-to-date and of a higher quality than other commercial maps when dealing with New and Changed Ways.

Contents

Bug reporting tools

These are tools that try to highlight and point out parts of the data that are likely wrong. There are also reports from manual quality checks by humans. In both cases, the reported issues may contain false positives and, when editing, care should be taken to ensure their accuracy. However, they can provide a very valuable visualisation of which areas need attention and can help spot and correct errors.

Notes is a feature of the OpenStreetMap website. Error reports can be added by using the 'Add a note' button in the lower right corner. Notes uses the same concept as OpenStreetBugs, which it has superseded.

MapDust is a bug tool operated by skobbler, which is also integrated into their OSM-based turn-by-turn navigation solution, thus originally focusing on navigation-relevant bugs but now serving as a general bug tool. As many of its users (end users!) may not be aware of OpenStreetMap at all, there are also quite a few non-relevant error reports included, but it does contain many good reports that are not covered by other tools. If a bug is determined to be caused by OSM data, an OSM editor can fix the data and mark the bug as resolved. Currently it is available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian.

Error detection tools

Error Detecting Tools check the OSM data for potential data errors, inaccuracy or sparsely mapped places. Users should check if these structures are really wrong (false positives usually occur and there are not really mapping rules which are set in stone) and correct the data for a continuously rising data quality.

Keep Right (keepright.at) shows a large number of automatically detected potential errors on a map or in list form. It has a system for reporting false positives and for labelling a bug as fixed. It has rules to automatically detect the following error types: non-closed areas, dead-ended one-ways, almost junctions, deprecated tags, missing tags, bridges/tunnels without layer (careful - not always an error), motorways without ref, places of worship without religion, POIs without name, ways without nodes, floating islands, un-tagged railway crossings, wrongly-used railway crossing tag, objects with FIXME=* tags, and relations without type.

The bottom-right corner of the interface has links to data outputs, including GeoJSON.

Possible downsides: Keep Right shows tens of thousands of errors, including many that have little impact for most data uses (e.g. a stream intersecting a highway: technically some feature is needed here (a bridge, a culvert or a ford). Keep Right uses flawed assumptions about layers of bridges and tunnels sometimes leading to false or misleading error messages (discussion).

Osmose ([1]) is a tool similar to Keep Right but offers even more error types. Obviously, this also includes smaller issues, like minor imprecisions or missing information that should be present in an ideal map.

JOSM/Validator. A feature of JOSM that checks data loaded into the editor, highlights errors and warnings, and can (on request) perform some automatic fixes. By default, it checks all objects modified in that session (and also reports errors if the error wasn't introduced by the uploader, but merely touched), but the validator can also perform complete validations on the downloaded data.

Gary68 has created a whole bunch of quality assurance tools. The tools are currently not maintained. Most of the tools are written in Perl (scripts for your computer – no web tools) and the source code of all Gary68 tools is published online. See also Category:gary68.

WayCheck is a program which checks the OSM data (file) for open ends and crossings. The found positions must be evaluated by a user and he or she can correct the data in JOSM or Potlatch or post a mark in OpenStreetBugs. The WayCheck page lists reports generated by the program and any user is encouraged to run reports and correct errors listed on the page and its links. This is especially useful for the quality of routing related data.

osmdiff is a program which compares two OSM files and documents the changes in list and map form. Some reports can be seen here: osmdiff reports.

unmappedplaces finds a list of potentially unmapped places. These are reported on the wiki page. The query can be run for other countries as well.

Mapping Quality is the successor of unmappedplaces. See the wiki page for the results. You get automatic street directory, KPIs (numbers) per place, maps that show status and CSV files for further processing.

FR:Servers/layers.openstreetmap.fr provides a slippy map with image layers to help people find possible errors in the data with worldwide coverage. The service provides:>

layers with roads/street …

having no name

no ref

no one-way

drawing fixmes and notes texts.

This tool also generates half-transparent coloured layers showing administrative areas by admin_level, as well as other "political" areas (used in France for mapping electoral subdivisions, as well as intercommunal structures of cooperation that do not fit the hierarchy of admin levels, but used as well in other countries for similar non hierarchical administrative, judiciary and electoral boundaries). These coloured layers allow searching easily for missing/broken/incomplete/unclosed boundaries as well as overlapping/duplicate boundaries of the same type, or boundaries that are not tagged correctly to be found by querying the OSM database with simple filters (for example missing tag "boundary=administrative", missing or incorrect value in "admin_level=*").

housenumbervalidator checks addr:* attributes for duplicate addresses, incomplete addresses, and possibly incorrect street names. Results are displayed on a slippy map. Currently validation is performed for Germany and Austria only, as there are some language-specific checks.

Remap-a-Tron service, blog post and github – A customizable web application to crowd-source the fixing of specific mapping errors by randomly displaying an item of a specific type in potential need of fixing. Originally designed to highlight areas with ways deleted due to the license change, it is now expanding into a general front end for fixing identifiable problems. This service is also known as MapRoulette or maproulette.org.

So that is what inaccessible road is! - displays the road segments, which for various reasons are inaccessible (they are also called "not route-able parts of the road network") on a map and allows editing in JOSM or Potlatch.

Routino a router for OSM data can generate an error log file (when run with the --errorlog option) that lists problems found that could be data errors or Routino's limited understanding of the data and which may affect the ability to calculate valid routes. Since the purpose of the Routino error log is to find data that causes problems for Routino it does not mean that all reported items are data errors.

Bicycle tags map is a web map that shows bicycle related tags. The goal of this web map with bicycle tags is rendering bicycle related tags that are not (properly) rendered on OSM’s 'Mapnik' map or on the cyclemap version. It can be handy for detecting errors in OSM.

Max Speed Overpass is a web map that shows maximum speeds. The goal of this web map is to show max speed and edit this from this map using your favorite OSM editor. The data shown is always up to date because it uses overpass query.

CheckAutopista[7] is a web map for checking information on freeways. It allows to check if maxspeed, lanes and name are used on the ways and it checks if the exits have their ref and their exit_to (or destination). Also it shows the freeway's service and rest areas and it's tollbooths.

The Relation Analyzer (http://ra.osmsurround.org/) helps to view several quality-assurance-related aspects of relations: (amongst others) relation on a map with segments' start and end marked, warning if the relation has gaps accompanied by a list of the segments if there are gaps, a height profile, type of ways included. tags.

[8] – A map of pedestrian/walking data; useful when checking coverage or connectivity of pedestrian mapping.

It aims to show pedestrian mapping coverage (how many of the pedestrian-taggable elements are tagged with pedestrian data); this may be useful to see how well an area is mapped for pedestrians.

It also aims to give an idea of connectivity (how well elements are connected, i.e. whether pedestrian elements have nodes connected to each other via nodes, for example, sometimes pedestrian elements are mapped without showing how they connect, for example a path which connects to a sidewalk may not yet have a node connecting one another); this information may be helpful for those working on routing.

[9] - The debug option of the OSRM demo page provides a map overlay of the highways' speeds calculated by OSRM.

Monitoring Tools

In addition to the above error and bug reporting tools, there are a number of tools that allow you to spot erroneous changes and edits. For example if you are very familiar with an area and have thoroughly mapped it, you might want to follow all changes and verify that no unintended damage or vandalism has happened in the area. The Planet History includes all changes that have been made, but might not be as easy to use.

OSM History Viewer (OSMHV) shows modifications by single changesets in a visual way, highlighting object positions before and after a given changeset and tag changes. See also: the tool achavi has a similar feature.

The WhoDidIt: OpenStreetMap Changeset Analyzer analyses what was changed in your area. You may need to select "month" or even "half a year" for the "age" parameter to see edits; display could take some seconds. Features an RSS feed to get informed about new changes.

at https://tyrasd.github.io/latest-changes/ shows all recent changesets (within a week) which touched the current map area. Changed objects are highlighted in the map. The object highlight is changing colour (to less intense) with the age of the relevant changeset. Note that deleted objects and changesets with only deletes are not shown.

achavi (Augmented Change Viewer) visualizes OpenStreetMap changes based on the Overpass API Augmented Delta (adiff) query. Supports continuous monitoring of an area of interest and visualizing single changesets (with some limitations).

Pascal's resultsmaps contain a "Where are the new OpenStreetMap Contributors?" feature. You can spot new contributors who have edited in a specific area (may be useful to check their edits for big errors, offer help, send welcome messages and spot vandalism). Create a RSS feed.

Assistant tools

QualityStreetMap ([10]) is a large grid for coordinating mapping work. You can select a tile and mark it complete for a specific tag. The grid covers the whole world and any tag. To edit the grid you have to log in with your OSM account. Zoom in to see the grid (min zoom level 12). The service is in beta.

Overpass API and the interface Overpass turbo lets you easily create custom queries which can be used to detect potential errors. The results get shown on a map with object detail links in popups and can be easily opened in JOSM. The example page lists some quality assurance uses.

ITO Map ([11]) is a map overlay service from ITO. It runs scripts that highlight specifics tags which shows how consistent, or not, use of that tag is. It displays groups of related tags simultaneously.